Great dives night and day!

Basket star shrimp

We had some great dives lately both day and night. For me the night dives never cease to amaze. We see all kinds of critters that never come out in the day. Take the Basket star shrimp for example. I’d never seen one, even in a book before the other night. I was able to get a decent picture of it, so I could see it a little better (and larger). Then the next night, a guest was holding a critter book open to a random page and I happened to look down and see an almost exact copy of the photo I took. I think I startled her when I pointed and exclaimed “there it is!”. I had been wondering and talking with other guests about it, so was glad to have the mystery solved.

Other dives recently have shown us some cool stuff including pink & yellow, green & black nudibranch and one with florescent orange lips, Huge turtles and the tiny but so cute boxer crab, who holds tiny anemone in its pinchers to fend off enemies! All that plus lots of big stuff too, including several groups of bumphead parrotfish, sharks, huge schools of Barracuda and jackfish at Barracuda Point!

Boxer crab

Long range dive

Our long range dive excursion took us to Pohpoh one and two yesterday. The first site reminded me of Lembeh. Straight black sand and no corals what-so-ever. The highlights were some cuttlefish, frogfish and a rare kind of sea snake (possibly an elephant’s trunk?) although there were weird anemones, lots of lionfish, shrimps and I saw a baby (maybe just tiny) squid eat something, possibly a shrimp.

The second dive had a mix of sand and corals with lots of interesting stuff including mantis shrimp, ornate ghost pipefish, three leaf fish hanging out together, one bright pink. The 70 minute dive ended too soon!

Next, we’re going on another long ranger, up north this time, toward Banka island for a 3 tank all-dayer.

Dive, Dive, Dive!

Wow! The diving has been nothing short of spectacular lately with 30+ meter visibility and a ton of stuff to see. On the BIG side, we’ve had a 2.5 meter Hammerhead shark sighting a few days ago inside Bunaken, too bad I went the other way with my divers. We’ve been seeing plenty of black and white tips, Napoleons on nearly every dive, Lots of barracuda and jacks too. On the smaller end, we’ve been seeing painted frogfish at a few dive sites, some interesting nudibranch that I’ve never seen before, squid, blue ring octopus (my first sighting) mandarin fish, saron shrimp and yesterday our dive guide Tedi spotted a pink leaf scorpion fish! Too bad I was in the pool teaching… BUT my student, on his second open water training dive saw: one large silver jack up close and personal, One huge ‘ol turtle, a black tip shark, a napoleon wrasse and thousands of tropical fish crowding the reef. Now thats a guaranteed way of getting spoiled early on! Tomorrow we finish the last two open water training dives. Rock on David!

Tiwoho Night Dive, Lekuan etc.

The diving has been great lately with lots of big stuff to see. Lekuan I has shown us many turtles, huge schools of enormous jacks, barracuda, Napoleon wrasse and sharks to top it all off. Needless to say there has been lots of action in the water!

Barracuda point treated us to a hundred or so circling ‘cuda and lots of juveniles and small stuff in the shallows to keep the rest of the dive quite interesting.

My first night dive in a few weeks treated us to loads of cool critters including a half dozen crocodile fish, flying guinard, octopus, cuttlefish and all kinds of decorator crabs. There was even a tiny lionfish perched on a sponge.

We have guests from all over the world at the moment and everyone is very happy with the excellent diving!

Great Diving!

Night dive Nudi at Tiwoho

The last 10 days or so have brought seemingly endless great dives to us here at Siladen. We’ve seen Frogfish, Mandarin fish, Lots of turtles, dolphins, spanish dancers & other great nudibranches, sharks, Napoleon wrasse, ghost pipefish, octopus and today even a Dugong!

We’ve had guests from Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, Netherlands, Canada & USA! Everyone here at the diving center and the rest of the resort want to send out a big thanks for coming and staying with us here at Siladen Resort. We’ve enjoyed the diving as well as getting to know each of you and making friends from around the world.

Staff Openwater Certification class

Students after Final Exam

After our Discover Scuba diving program for our staff last month, we picked up 8 students for a complete Openwater class. All of them have completed the class successfully and are now on their way to becoming our latest ambassadors for the underwater world to our local village and beyond.

Here at Siladen, we strive to educate the local population and encourage participation in activities that benefit the environment as well as the livelihoods of Indonesians.

Underwater voyagers

Explorers of the deep

Congrats to our new Advanced Open Water student

Our devoted diver from Switzerland has completed her Advanced Open Water course last night on a great night dive at Lekuan that treated divers to a blue ring octopus and tons of other cool critters including a bobtailed cuttlefish. Way to go!

Advanced diver checks out an anemone with clownfish

Great Dive day to outer islands

We had a fantastic day of diving Manado Tua and Mante Hage islands.

Manado Tua dive site Tanjumg Kopi was just teeming with all kinds of fish, with the highlights being the barracuda, a variety of nudibranch as well as a red pygmy seahorse (Way to go Noldi).

Mantehage dive site Bango was another great dive with all kinds of life, including porcelain crabs and a huge nudibranch called Ceratosoma Trilobatum, about 10cm long.

The trip home treated us to a large pod of jumping dolphins and left us all with smiling faces .

C. Trilobatum by Paul Anderson

Bon Voyage to our weekend trippers from Jakarta

We hope you enjoyed your time here at the resort as much as we did. The weekend flew by but it was a memorable one. The two boys are really great kids. I miss hearing them call my name, even before I see them! Their youthful energy will be missed.

Have a safe trip back home.

Many thanks

 

The waters of Siladen

Everyone here at the Diving Center and beyond would like to give a heartfelt thanks to our guests who departed yesterday. We had a great family from New Zealand who participated in snorkeling  as well as a number of Discover scuba dives, Sam you’re ready to get certified. We had a fantastic couple from Germany who were long term guests with us, we all miss you. Come back and dive with us again soon. And last but not least our very personable couple from Saudi/Malaysia, It was a pleasure to get to know you both and we are looking forward to seeing you again in the future.